Changelog

New Features:

• Claude Prompt Caching (Multi-Block): Three Anthropic prompt caching enhancements, scoped to the Claude model (#7662):
  • New system_prompt_blocks: List[SystemPromptBlock] on Claude — each block has text, cache, and optional ttl ("5m" or "1h") that overrides the model-level extended_cache_time flag per block.
  • New cache_tools: bool on Claude (Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, VertexAI). Adds cache_control to the last tool so the tool prefix is cached.
  • Deterministic tool ordering in Model._format_tools (sort by name), so request prefixes stay stable across runs and prompt caches actually hit. Applies across Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and Bedrock.
• Parallel MCP Backend: Added ParallelMCPBackend as a new web backend for WebContextProvider (#7667). Talks to Parallel's public MCP server at search.parallel.ai/mcp, exposing web_search + web_fetch (compressed markdown output). Keyless by default; Bearer-auth via PARALLEL_API_KEY for higher rate limits; optional OAuth endpoint via use_oauth=True. Defaults to a 30s timeout (up from MCPTools' 10s) because web_fetch frequently runs longer on large pages.

Improvements:

• OpenAI Model String: Mapped "openai:" model string prefix to OpenAIResponses (previously OpenAIChat). Added "openai-chat:" as a fallback for users who still need OpenAIChat. Agent(model="openai:gpt-5.4") now resolves to OpenAIResponses(id="gpt-5.4").

Bug Fixes:

• A2A: Pinned a2a-sdk>=0.3.0,<1.0 in the release workflow. a2a-sdk v1.0 has breaking changes that need to be adopted in a follow-up.
• Cookbook:
  • Fixed outdated Redis cookbook docs - removed dependency install and setup commands that are no longer needed (#7615).
  • Fixed output_schema example to demonstrate output_schema with a Pydantic model (it was incorrectly using output_model with web search).
  • Fixed typo in cookbook/05_agent_os/README.md that referenced a non-existent agno_agent.py (corrected to agno_assist.py) (#7663).

What's Changed

• chore: map "openai:" model string to OpenAIResponses by @kausmeows in #7655
• fix typo in 05_agent_os readme by @asifshaikh in #7663
• [cookbook] fix outdated docs for Redis by @edlng in #7615
• feat: add ParallelMCPBackend for web search via Parallel MCP by @Mustafa-Esoofally in #7667
• feat: multi-block prompt caching for Claude by @ysolanky in #7662
• chore: Release v2.6.1 by @kausmeows in #7666

New Contributors

• @asifshaikh made their first contribution in #7663
• @edlng made their first contribution in #7615

Full Changelog: v2.6.0...v2.6.1